AUSTRALIA IS home to some very large, charismatic birds. In fact, the emu is considered to be the second largest in the world, right after the ostrich.
With a wingspan up to 3m, the pelican is Australia's largest flying bird. Found in estuarine waterways, rivers and lakes throughout Australia, the antics of these Australian birds make for fascinating bird watching. The pelican has an elongated bill that measures up to 47cm – the longest in the world.
Flightless feathered family. The cassowary is a large, flightless bird most closely related to the emu. Although the emu is taller, the cassowary is the heaviest bird in Australia and the second heaviest in the world after its cousin, the ostrich.
Introducing Australia's tallest bird – the emu! These iconic, flightless birds can be spotted all day long in our emu habitat, right here at Australia Zoo. They are found living throughout the continent and inhabit a variety of environments, including arid inland regions, snowy mountains, coastal terrain and woodlands.
The largest cassowaries can stand as high as six feet and weigh up to 160 pounds. These large birds cannot fly, but their extremely powerful legs propel them at great speeds.
The Great Kori Bustard (Ardeotis tardi) is the largest modern flying bird, with body masses up to 18 kg (19), but it takes off only with great difficulty by running like taxiing aircraft (20). Could Argentavis, ≈3.5 times heavier than the Great Kori Bustard, take off from the ground?
The largest (heaviest) flying bird today is the Kori Bustard (Ardeotis kori) of Africa, males weigh about 18kg, females about half that. The largest bird ever to fly were the Teratorns (a type of Condor), the largest of which, Argentavis magnificens, had a wingspan of 3 metres, and weighed 120kg.
The Plains-Wanderer - one of Australia's rarest birds.
The laughing kookaburra is Australia's national symbol. The kookaburra is a brown-colored bird, about the size of a crow. The male is easily distinguished from the female by the blue hues on his wing feathers and darker blue on his tail feathers.
The grey currawong (Strepera versicolor) is a large passerine bird native to southern Australia, including Tasmania. One of three currawong species in the genus Strepera, it is closely related to the butcherbirds and Australian magpie of the family Artamidae.
The emu (/ˈiːmjuː/; Dromaius novaehollandiae) is the second-tallest living bird after its ratite relative the ostrich. It is endemic to Australia where it is the largest native bird and the only extant member of the genus Dromaius.
Fast Facts. The Wedge-tailed Eagle is Australia's largest living bird of prey and one of the largest eagles in the world.
The Elephant Birds of Madagascar were huge! Recent fossil evidence has revealed the largest of them all: Vorombe titan. This gargantuan bird– as far as we know, the heaviest bird to ever walk the Earth– was up to 1,400 lb (635 kg) and was 10 ft (3 m) tall.
Wedge-tailed eagles are found all over mainland Australia and into Tasmania. They are the largest flying raptor in Australia and the fourth largest in the world.
The White-necked Heron, sometimes know as the Pacific Heron, is the most common Heron found thoughout Australia.
The magnificent tiger, Panthera tigris is a striped animal. It has a thick yellow coat of fur with dark stripes. The combination of grace, strength, agility and enormous power has earned the tiger its pride of place as the national animal of India.
But first, some background: The Peregrine Falcon is indisputably the fastest animal in the sky. It has been measured at speeds above 83.3 m/s (186 mph), but only when stooping, or diving.
What is the biggest exotic bird? The biggest exotic bird has to be the Hyacinth macaw. But these cobalt blue birds with enormous size are critically endangered and around 5,000 of them are left in the wild today.
The largest bird on the Australian mainland is the Southern Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius) and lays the largest eggs of all Australian bird species (138m long and 95mm wide).
This Amazon avian's famously colorful bill also happens to be the largest in the bird class—a whopping 7.5 inches long. Toucans use these enormous beaks to do many things- from reaching fruit on branches too small for them to perch on to engaging in a fruit toss as part of a mating ritual!
Ostrich. The mighty ostrich is truly the king of birds. The largest living bird, ostriches can grow up to 9 feet tall and weigh more than 300 pounds. Their eggs, fittingly, are also the world's largest—about 5 inches in diameter and 3 pounds in weight.
It may seem strange that among the more than 10,000 bird species in the world today is a group that literally cannot fly or sing, and whose wings are more fluff than feather. These are the ratites: the ostrich, emu, rhea, kiwi and cassowary.
The White Bellbird holds a Guinness Book of World Records entry as the loudest bird in the world. A member of the cotinga family, the White Bellbird shares its clan with cocks-of-the-rock, umbrellabirds, and philas.
At 40-plus pounds, great bustards are among the heaviest birds that fly.